After the musicians had gone home, nights at Grete von Joachimsthaler’s flat usually ended in bed or the bathtub, a bathtub like few in Berlin, eight feet long and five feet wide, black enamel with claw feet, where Halder and then Nisa endlessly massaged Grete, from temples to toes, the two of them fully dressed, even sometimes with their coats on (at Grete’s express request), while Grete cavorted like a mermaid, sometimes on her back, sometimes on her belly, other times underwater! her nakedness covered only by foam.
